Day 39 - Saturday, April 18

Previous night's sleep - non-existent (terrible) - zero hours - I did not sleep - start/stop - N/A

Consumption:

Snack - beef stew + cornbread
Breakfast - 1 cinnamon roll + OJ + coffee
Lunch - a little bit of Caesar Salad (romaine, Parmesan, croutons, light caesar dressing) + beef stew + half a cookie
Dinner - Chef's choice - kebab platter, garlic naan, regular naan, samosa, rice, mulligitany (soup), and extremely thin and spicy bread/potato (not really sure what it was - but it was put out on the table like dinner rolls or breadsticks as soon as we sat down) from Ruchee on Midlothian (Indian Food) - I was not very impressed with the food, I wish I had ordered the "go-to" butter chicken.

So, Friday night, Saturday morning - I stayed up all night cooking for an event. The menu, "Son of a Gun Beefstew", Caesar Salad, Tossed Salad, and Sundried tomato and Garlic cornbread (I added fresh herbs to the top of the cornbread before baking - rosemary and thyme). I started earlier in the week buying paper goods and salad dressing. I thought I had finished buying the rest of the ingredients for the lunch, and luckily, after going to Sam's Club and Harris Teeter, I stopped by Food Lion after I remembered I would need potatoes. I got home around 9pm after shopping and picking up some chinese on the way home. Boy was I wrong. After reading the recipe for the stew, I realized that I had forgotten to get stewed tomatoes. It was about 10:50pm and I scrambled out the door. Food Lion closed at 11pm, and I got there with about 5 minutes to go. They had crushed tomatoes, whole, diced, and tomato paste along with a variety of tomato sauces. I gave up and went to Teeter.

It's now about 11:30pm and I start cooking. The stew takes forever, even if the prep work were done ahead of time, about 3 hours. I didn't know how many people were going to show up for the event, so I made about 4 gallons of stew. That's 3.5 lbs of London Broil, 5 lbs of red potatoes, 2 lbs of carrots, along with pounds of frozen veggies.

After I got the stew going, I mixed up the cornbread. I lost two little baking pans during our outing to Lake Anna a couple of weeks ago. After frantically scouring the house for them, Visa came up with a Pyrex casserole. Perfect. Armed with two of them, I managed to fix 6 boxes of cornbread mix + ingredients into both. Normally, when I follow the recipe (above) I make them into muffins or mini-muffins. I only have two muffin tins, regular sized and tiny. I wasn't about to make 6 batches, it was past 2 am when I started the cornbread. There was an issue - lack of texture on the outside of the cornbread - due to the shape of the pan - one ginormous rectangle vs. a small circle. Yes, the tops and sides were good, but I like more crunchy all around.

Maybe I will get another muffin pan. Who knows. After the cornbread was in the oven, I started cutting up the romaine for the salad. 18 hearts in all. I was finished and satisfied by about 5:30am. I knew that I could not go to sleep and wake up in time for the event, I needed to leave the house by 8:30am. So, I decided to stay up and watch the Dragonball Evolution movie - horrible.

I was on time to the event, but the doors were not open and I was unable to start breakfast - the cinnamon rolls. We got inside the building around 9:30am and I got to work. Pretty frantic, but we got it done and the day was a success. The crowd favorite was the cornbread. The event was over by about 2pm and I left for home around 3pm with about 1.25 gallons of the stew inside of a pickle bucket behind the passenger seat.